The Arabic Graffiti on Homeland's Set Says 'Homeland Is Racist'

Artists Heba Amin, Caram Kapp and Stone—who together call themselves "Arabian Street Artists—were hired to add graffiti to the set of the Syrian refugee camp on this past week's episode of Homeland. The artists used the opportunity to send their own message... about Homeland. And they did a very badass thing.

Arabic translations of "Homeland is racist" and "This show does not represent the view of the artists" as well as "#BlackLivesMatter" were featured on the set. These sentiments aren't unprecendented; the series has been rightly criticized for several of its biased portrayals of the Middle East. The artists released a statement explaining the reasoning behind their "intervention."

The series has garnered the reputation of being the most bigoted show
on television for its inaccurate, undifferentiated and highly biased
depiction of Arabs, Pakistanis, and Afghans, as well as its gross
misrepresentations of the cities of Beirut, Islamabad—and the
so-called Muslim world in general… In our initial meeting, we were
given a set of images of pro-Assad graffiti- apparently natural in a
Syrian refugee camp. Our instructions were: (1) the graffiti has to be
apolitical (2) you cannot copy the images because of copyright
infringement (3) writing “Mohamed is the greatest, is okay of course”.
We would arm ourselves with slogans, with proverbs allowing for
critical interpretation, and, if the chance presented itself, blatant
criticism directed at the show. And so, it came to be.

Showrunner Alex Gansa, who should be feeling pretty silly right about now, seems unfazed, but he isn't responding to the artists' specific problems with the show. "We wish we’d caught these images before they made it to air," Gansa said. "However, as Homeland always strives to be subversive in its own right and a stimulus for conversation, we can’t help but admire this act of artistic sabotage."

The real embarrassment is how the graffiti made it to air in the first place, an issue the artists spoke to in their statement: "The content of what was written on the walls, however, was of no concern. In their eyes, Arabic script is merely a supplementary visual that completes the horror-fantasy of the Middle East, a poster image dehumanizing an entire region to human-less figures in black burkas and moreover, this season, to refugees."